MASC Science Club

Fan Club
Name:	Melbourne Amateur Science Club (MASC)
Dates:	1971-1977
Founder(s):	Geoff Allshorn and others
Leadership:
Country based in:	Australia
Focus:	Science and Technology; Star Trek TOS
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The Melbourne Amateur Science Club was an informal group of late primary school or lower secondary school students, who ran their own science and technology-based activities. Club meetings were held on a rotating basis at private homes, and activities were assisted by teachers from a local school. Founded by Geoff Allshorn, it ran from 1971 or 1972 to 1977, and published a series of newsletters ("Club News") and magazines ("The Space Age") - this latter comprising a form of zine before they understood what fanzines were. Very few copies remain of these publications.

The club was composed of a series of subsections, each run by someone with a particular interest in that field, for example: Physics, Astronomy, Archaeology, Chemistry, Electronics, and UFOlogy (intended to seriously investigate cases of any alleged local sightings), with aligned subjects including Music and Photography. Each MASC subsection aimed to produce a report for club meetings, or the newsletter or zine. One of the aligned interests was science fiction, which loosely formed another subsection. It was this subsection that became Austrek, a Star Trek subsection, in October 1975 after the TV series reappeared on Australian TV earlier that year following the introduction of colour television.

By November 1976, the Austrek subsection had grown so large that it swallowed up the few resources of MASC and caused the closure of this parent club, becoming a club in its own right.